Dinomorphs Four: Acts
by Gryphinwyrm7
Summary: The Pemalite ship is almost repaired, and the Dinomorphs are ready. They have what they came for, a means of fighting The One. Now the key is to get back to Earth-Andalite space and put it to good use. Unfortunately to do that, they must acquire a new morph. A dinosaur that is nearly extinct again. A Dinosaur that is being HUNTED back into extinction, by alien predators...
1. The Hunt Begins

Chapter One

My name is Menderash-Postill-Fostill. I am not an Andalite. Not anymore. I sacrificed my Andalite body, my Andalite identity, to reclaim my lost honor.

Andalites were forbidden from entering the Kelbrid Quarantine Zone. Humans were not.

So I morphed. I morphed into a human. And I never demorphed.

It is a difficult concept for many Andalites to comprehend. To willingly become a _nothlit_. It is considered shameful in our society. But it would have been equally shameful for me to remain an Andalite while my Prince needed me. So I morphed, and didn't look back.

My human morph is, of course, a _Frolis Maneuver. _Five humans I encountered on my first day stationed on earth donated the DNA. They were quite friendly. Two males and three females. One of the males even paid for my first Cinnabon. Which was magical. I would always be grateful to those human DNA donors. I doubt they knew what I had done, though. They couldn't possibly know that I had trapped myself in the human form composed of their genetic codes.

I barely even remembered what they looked like. Once a _Frolis Maneuver _is composed, you no longer need to focus on the DNA donors to morph the body. Focusing on the _Frolis_ form itself will do.

War-Prince Escafil is a genius however. He has constructed a new technology that will allow _nothlits_ such as myself to morph again. But with our templates reset. The bodies we became trapped in are the new default. He experimented with many Taxxons, Yeerks, and even a few humans who had all become _nothlits_ to compose this technology. It was sheer brilliance.

I was recently treated with it. Thus, I am now morph capable once more. But my human body is my default now. I cannot morph my old morphs, from before I became a _nothlit. _I had a Djabala, Kafit Bird, Hork-Bajir, Taxxon, Leeran, Garatron, and of course, a human morph.

Now those morphs are gone. Replaced, even. Since being treated with the new technology, I acquired an earth bird called a Harris Hawk. And then I was given a second chance at honor. I followed three humans who had gotten wind of Pemalite technology. Technology that could cure, or end a new threat to the Human-Andalite alliance.

The One. A singular entity, in viral form. It absorbs life into itself. It has done so with Prince Aximillli. To reclaim my honor, I must free Aximilli from its clutches. But I cannot. Not at this time, anyway. But I will. I swear by my now non-existent tail-blade.

I was not in human form now. I was in morph. A Deinonychus. The term is quite unfamiliar to Andalites, and even most humans, I would wager. It is a dinosaur. A type of earth-animal that no longer exists. It has gone extinct.

Extinct on Earth, but not on _Terra Nova_; the planet that I was on now. Terraformed in the past, it was transformed with billions of formerly extinct Earth-Animals. Mostly of the Dinosaur type. So my human friends now called themselves "Dinomorphs". I suppose, that in a way, I too am a Dinomorph.

The deinonychus resembles a brightly-colored Hork-Bajir, but smaller, and with no blades. It has a stiff board-like tail it carries in the air behind it, to act as a balance. It has three-fingered clawed hands, and its feet resemble Hork-Bajir feet, but with one difference. It had a large, sickle-like claw, not dissimilar to an Andalite tail-blade.

It was a predator, that hunted in packs, like Earth-Wolves, or Desbadian _Karrablasts_. An expert hunter.

Which was good…Because I needed to be an expert hunter to bring down my quarry.

After all…I was hunting Andalites.


	2. The Hunt Continues

Chapter Two

I spotted my prey, and crept closer. A single Andalite in a field, his head erect, stalk-eyes scanning the horizon for predators. And an all-too familiar face.

I kept my scythe-like claw retracted. I had no intention of killing, or even harming this Andalite. I just wanted to catch him. In a way this Andalite was my son. In a way, he was also me. He was a clone.

A clone of my original, Andalite DNA pattern. Produced by a fluke of alien technology, but also my one chance to be "myself" again. If I could but acquire his DNA, then the morph of my original Andalite self would be within my blood, encapsulated in a naltron molecule…Just waiting for me to access…Just waiting for me to use to become _me_ again.

I wanted it. I wanted it so badly…But to claim it…I had to acquire it. So I stalked…Closer and closer to the Andalite.

The deinonychus mind was perturbed. At this point in the hunt, it would be signaling other deinonychus to be taking positions surrounding the "prey". But I had done this on my own. The Dinomorphs did not really trust me, not that I blamed them. I had blackmailed them to come with them to _Terra Nova. _It stood to reason that they would not like or trust me.

I was fine with that.

I crept closer and closer. A stalk-eye turned in my direction, and I froze. The eye-stalk lingered for a few seconds, and then began scanning the forests again. _Terra Nova_ had many fierce predators. I was certain that my clone had already encountered a few of them.

I crept through the grass, closer and closer to my quarry. I wondered vaguely, if this had been what it had been like for the _Vornekern _or the ancient _Kafit Karakiller _in ancient times. Stalking unsuspecting Andalites, while being ever aware of our natural defenses, like the stalk-eyes that could see in all directions. Or the deadly tail blade that I secretly longed to have again.

Of course the _Vornekern _and the _Kafit Karakiller_ were long since extinct. Had been for thousands of years. The Andalite homeword, or as humans had started calling it, Andalia, had no major predatory species. Nothing there hunted Andalites. We had exterminated any species that posed a threat to us.

The _Kafit Karakiller _had one living relative. The smaller, flight-capable _Kafit Bird _that is popular with young Andalites for morphing. The _Vornekern _had no living relatives. An evolutionary dead end…Because their prey had rendered them extinct.

I crouched low…And pounced, springing out of the grass at my prey.

The Andalite clone reacted, his stalk-eyes snapping on me and his tail whipped at my head faster than I could see. The blade stabbed me in my left eye, and I screamed in pain. A gutteral, animalistic sound.

My clone then bounded away. Full Andalite speed. A good 60 miles per hour, if it wanted to. Another Andalite defense against predators. Our awesome speed. Nature had designed the Andalite efficiently. We were perfectly built to evade, avoid, and combat predators.

I had no chance of catching my clone. No chance of acquiring him. No chance of being an Andalite again.

I demorphed. Not to Andalite. To human, since that was my default state. It is truly a bizarre thing…To demorph into a body that is not the one you were born with. I wondered if that was how Tobias felt every time he became a hawk again.

My three-clawed fingers shriveled up and split apart into caramel colored hands. Fur sprouted from the top of my head and my face, as my snout retracted inwards, and my sharp, dromaesaur teeth became flat ordinary human teeth.

And my tail sucked into my spine and vanished. That was always the worst part. It was comforting to have a tail, even if it was nothing like an Andalite tail. Now I had nothing.

I finished demorphing into human, and then remorphed into a Sordes, which is a small flying reptile, rather like an earth bat, or a Korla _Klepthiir. _

Apparently, upon the ancient earth, it was flying reptiles, not birds, who controlled the skies. Birds existed, but were a distinctive minority.

I flew west until arriving at a large green ship. It vaguely resembled an earth-canine.

It had also been sheered in half. The other half lay approximately 300 yards northeast of the main body of the ship. This was the ship we had traveled to _Terra Nova_ in.

The humans I came here with…The Dinomorphs, were all waiting outside the ship. Jason, Emily and Melissa. Three humans. But these were not warriors. Not fighters. I had served with the humans, with the _Animorphs_ Jake, Marco, and Tobias. They were casual, but they were true warriors. True fighters.

These humans, Jason, Emily, and Melissa, they were not fighters. They were recreational morphers. But they were handling themselves well in extraordinary circumstances.

I landed and demorphed.

"S'up, Mendy?" Jason asked, using casual Earth-English slang and a nickname.

I stiffened.

"I was…," I hesitated. "Hunting."

Jason gave me an odd look.

"Our larder's pretty full of fish and protoceratops," Jason commend. "What were you hunting?"

"I was honing my skills," I said, a half-truth. "I was born an herbivore, I am unaccustomed to the idea of hunting. I felt the need to try it in a more…Active manner."

"Any luck?" Emily asked brightly. Humans seem to often ascribe random chance to events that clearly require skills to succeed at.

"No," I said. "Not as such, no. My quarry eluded me."

"What were you morphed as—?" Melissa started to ask, but was interrupted by the arrival of a steel-and-ivory android with earth-canine features.

A Chee.

The ship we had come in was hers.

"We have a problem," Erica said.

"We have lots of problems," Jason commented dryly.

"This is a pretty big one," Erica replied. "The reason I asked you all to come here…The Nano-Repair matrix has run out of raw materials for the repairs. It can't finish fixing the ship without the metal to replace the parts it has lost."

"Am I missing something here?" Melissa asked, gesturing obviously towards the pile of scrap metal that was once the aft section of the ship.

"Yep," Erica said. "There's plenty of raw materials to complete the repairs, right over there…300 yards away. The nanites have a radial limitation of 43 yards."

"Well," Jason said. "We could move the ship." 

"Jason," Erica commented. "Do you have any idea just how much metal is over there? We're talking about an entire aft section of a Pemalite ship here. Your T. rex, Spinosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Chasmasaur morphs COMBINED with my Chee-Strength couldn't budge that thing. You're big…but you don't have the raw tonnage to move that."

"Could we not simply break the scrap metal down into smaller, more manageable pieces, and move it over bit by bit?" I offered.

"Ramonite-Titanium alloy?" Erica asked me back.

{Ah,} I said, switching to thought-speak. It was one of the ways I "kept myself Andalite" on the inside. I could still thought-speak. If I was feeling particularly human, I would speak Earth-English out loud. But if I felt more "Andalite" I would thought-speak.

"Indestructable?" Jason asked.

{Not strictly indestructible,} I said. {It WAS cleaved in half by a beam weapon. But as far as we are concerned, yes, indestructible. Nothing we have on this planet will cut that metal.}

"Not even our own beam weapon?" Emily asked, referring to a device similar to a Dracon Beam that we had stored back at our base of operations.

"Not nearly enough power in that little thing to cut it up," I said.

"Well this bites," Melissa said. "We finally found the Pemalite compound, but now we can't get it off-world."

"Indeed," I commented. "It is indeed frustrating. No land-based species in the known galaxy has the size and strength to move that much mass."

"Well," Jason commented slyly. "That's…Not ENTIRELY true."

Jason was something of an amateur expert on prehistoric earth fauna from this era. And clearly he know knew something.

"I haven't seen any," Jason said. "But given all that we know about this world, I have to…I HAVE to assume that there are some around."

"Some what?" Melissa asked.

"Titanosaurs," Jason said. "Ultrasaurus, Seismosaurus. Futalognkosaurus, Argentinasaurus, and the largest of all sauropods…The largest known land animal to ever walk the planet…The mighty Dreadnaughtus."


End file.
